The Presidential podcast has just hit a milestone—we've made it to episode 16, which is all about Abraham Lincoln.

Beginning in January of 2016, we have been releasing one episode per week on the American presidency, starting with George Washington and working our way chronologically through history. This week's episode focuses on Lincoln's love and gift for language, both the written and the spoken word, and how that skill not only helped him bind together a country in the midst of civil war but also forever changed our understanding of presidential leadership.

"What I saw in Lincoln that becomes almost a trademark attribute I look for in other presidents is that sense of empathy and humanity," says Doris Kearns Goodwin, the author of Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. Goodwin is a featured guest in this week's episode along with Michelle Krowl of the Library of Congress, who discusses many of Lincoln's rare handwritten poems, letters and speeches that the library has in its possession.

To dive into the language, leadership and legacy of the 16th president, listen to the episode here:

As listeners tune in each week, the podcast reveals the ways in which our collective sense of what’s ’presidential’ has evolved over the years and how each president—esteemed, loathed or nearly forgotten—has something to tell us about what it takes to hold the nation’s highest office.